Touchbar Killer for Windows?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,504 words · ~7 min read
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have you ever seen something and immediately assume that it's a gimmick
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like for example this brush buddies justin bieber singing toothbrush
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i'm in it's certainly fun
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but if ultimately when i'm finished my teeth are no
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cleaner than if i had saved seven dollars and gotten a regular one
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well when i first heard that ASUS put a
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touchscreen in the touchpad
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of their new zenbook pro i have to confess that it triggered my
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gimmick detector at least before i used it for a while
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as for now well i'll say this
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it's a lot better than a worthless gimmick
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but then also kind of worse you know what's not a gimmick though
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glass wire glass wire is a firewall that displays your pc's incoming and outgoing
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network connections in real time use offer code Linus to get 25 off glasswire
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2.0 through the link below
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the overall design of the ASUS zenbook pro ux 580 ge is a solid
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b plus the brushed aluminum and relatively
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small bezels are nice but i just can't shake the nagging
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feeling that it looks kind of like an inspiron but made from
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better materials and making matters worse compared to dell's professional
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xps 15 it is a fingerprint magnet and the reduced chassis rigidity
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makes it feel significantly cheaper which i mean fortunately for it it
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actually is with that said i can't think of a situation where i'd be embarrassed
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to be seen with the zenbook pro i mean whether it's in an office or a studio or
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a library it does a great job of blending in seamlessly
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that is at least until your studymates notice the second display so
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there's a standard one up top though it might not be fair to call it
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standard because between its 4k resolution touch support and factory
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calibration everything from consuming to creating
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content is a joy as long as you don't care about HDR and then there's the one
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where the track pad would normally be
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ASUS is calling their little creation here the screen pad
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most of the time it just acts like a normal trackpad and actually quite a
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good one you'd think it would feel weird but it has a nice soft touch and a
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satisfying click in fact even without a screen under it it would already be
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getting a pretty positive review and then it's got extra functionality
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like contextual shortcut keys and the ability to use it as an extended display
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well that should get it right into a plus territory right
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hold on in some situations it's actually great
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the youtube integration on chrome puts
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ad skipping and a full screen toggle
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right at your fingertips quite literally and it even lets you
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scrub along the timeline and this is while keeping most of the screen free to
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be used as a regular trackpad then by contrast spotify shouldn't even be
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listed as compatible i mean you know how most keyboards have
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media hotkeys up here at the top making
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play pause and track control a single action
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well for some inexplicable reason ASUS has removed
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those functions and replaced them with nothing
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so you can have the pleasure of executing three actions instead of
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pressing one button and then making matters worse once the
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spotify app is open the touchpad no
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longer works meaning that it is literally always
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faster and more convenient to just click
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on the actual spotify app and this problem of not being able to
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use the touchpad when in certain apps hampers the usefulness further for
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things that would otherwise be great like the numpad or calculator which is
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particularly annoying given that these are issues that were solved in the word
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numpad like in office programs the numpad works freaking fantastic
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but also reveals its limitations only the numpad and symbol inserter
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actually really save you time and then for power users keyboard shortcuts like
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control s are going to be the way to go for a very long time and then finally
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the lack of features like macros and equations on the screen pad meant that
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we really just didn't get many opportunities to use it
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overall then i don't think the screen pad is a huge selling point at this
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moment but at least if you don't like it there's still a perfectly usable
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touchpad like normal and so i like where ASUS is going with this and i hope we
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continue to see development on the apps something that should speed up when they
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release the sdk which is coming soon
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now this is kind of a funny thing because we're halfway through this video
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and i haven't even gotten to the specs of this machine on paper the zenbook pro
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is an absolute beast with a core i9 6
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core processor a gtx 1050 ti graphics
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card 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of NVMe
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storage and at that price
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unfortunately it doesn't touch the maximum performance
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of the core i9 and you know what i'm just going to come out and say it i
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blame apple for this very unfortunate
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industry trend like a core i9 macbook
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pro the zenbook pro pro right almost immediately overheats
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under heavy load dropping the frequency even below the base clock of the
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processor and even though the temps do get a bit better when the fans kick in it's still
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running well under base clock realistically you could be better off
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with a cheaper core i7 if you want a chassis that's this slim
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and the heat problems don't stop there while you're gaming or even in some
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cases while performing mundane tasks like installing programs the bottom of
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this machine would regularly get uncomfortably hot sometimes close to 50
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degrees celsius making the zenbook pro less of a laptop and more of a desktop
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well i mean i mean not like a desktop but like the point is it works better
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sitting on a on a desk you get with you guys get what i mean
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also the battery life isn't that great that was supposed to tie into the desk
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thing desk top desk okay forget it so
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continuing on the dislike train only the storage is upgradable the
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webcam is softer than soft camembert
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cheese and the keyboard leaves a fair bit to be desired it's pretty similar to
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the one found on the dell g3 which is all right in a budget gaming
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machine and overall pretty good but when you compare it to professional machines
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from microsoft lenovo and dell the keyboard on the zenbook lacks key
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stabilization chassis rigidity and tactile feel
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which i guess nicely leads into our conclusion
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besides the thermals nothing about the zenbook is
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bad in fact the speakers which i couldn't find another place to talk about are
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pretty good but at twenty three hundred dollars for
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our build the only thing that really stands out against the competitors is
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the top of the line core i9 CPU and the screen pad but since the thermals don't
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allow the i-9 to stretch its legs and the screen pad needs a lot of work on
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the software side before i would consider it a selling point
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at this time the zenbook would probably need to be more than a couple hundred
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dollars less than a surface book 2 for me to recommend it
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